9 Responses

Who wouldn't be? Blue Smoke isn't only a damn good read, but a model of how to write and organise a scholarly but unpretentious work of cultural history with a hell of a lot of research lightly worn. Harder than it looks.

I have a signed copy of Blue Smoke having been lucky enough to go to one of the launches. It's fascinating and detailed but too heavy for bed time reading. What it did require was a lot (like years) of research and writing time and although, I understand, Chris was lucky to get bits and pieces of subsidised research time (through the National Library and a university), to produce this quality of work takes obsessional dedication over a long time, and acceptance of being poor and/or socially isolated for much of that. So a round about way of saying we need lots more funded opportunities for researcher/writers if we want more New Zealand historical material of this quality. (I'm sure people like Jessie Munro and Redmer Yska would agree.) Rant over.

Books like 'Blue Smoke' are why Kiwis aren't reading much NZ literary fiction (ref Metro and last week's Nine to Noon). Why would you want to keep on plodding through dour miserable stories about dour miserable people when you could be absorbed in well-written stories about fascinating people living interesting lives?

Oh, I've got something to say about that. Graham Adams' think-piece in the August issue of North & South article is damn hard to respond to because it's a classic curate's egg. Some fair questions asked, but so much of it is tendentiously argued with some epically dodgy numbers and dubious comparisons being thrown around the whole suffers. I can't even a firm handle on what Adams means by "literary" fiction. Was Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck "literary" when it was published by a university press, and somehow stop being so when it because a surprising best-seller?

Why would you want to keep on plodding through dour miserable stories about dour miserable people when you could be absorbed in well-written stories about fascinating people living interesting lives?

Honestly, I wish all local non-fiction was a well-written and thoroughly engaging as Blue Smoke. It isn't. As for the idea that New Zealand fiction is (to paraphrase Sam Neil) a dour, miserablist literature of unease that nobody wants to read. Pshaw and twaddle.

Look, I'm a firm adherent of Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crud. A shit book is a shit book, and I'm not interested in any of them.